Get to know James Massiah, the DJ, poet, rapper and producer who’s mastering the art of self-expression

James attributes a large part of the project’s success and his own creative recovery to a number of positive influences on his life, name-checking friends and creatives that helped him realise the project: Lord Tusk, his friend Kamar, Louis and Theo Gibson, Ragz [Originale] , Jay Caesar, Joy Orbison, Dean Blunt, Otis, Jon Rust and a host of other names. On the journey into production and finishing the project, he describes how sometimes it was the lack of response from others, the harsh rejections, people being busy rather than helping with his demos, that made him realise it had to come from himself, there were no shortcuts.

“It was almost like the universe was telling me ‘put the drugs down, stop partying’, to sit down and go to my studio and do the hard graft.” He describes the above influences as “help, in the same way that a coach might tell Bellingham, Saka, Grealish what to do, bring the best out of them – ultimately it’s for them to go to the laptop and make the music. No-one sat with me, no-one made the music – I did it all.”

Underpinning it all for James is the concept of amoral egoism, a niche philosophical tenet that describes humanity as being driven first and foremost by emotionality before anything else. Discussing the concept and how he utilises it in his everyday understanding of life, he says it is, “the idea that ultimately everything exists for its own pleasure, and that notion of someone’s own pleasure is up to them to define for themselves. That gave me a lot of power, coming from the church where the notion of seeking your own pleasure goes against everything that you’re taught, in a way that was inhibiting for me. There’s no way I’d be able to be the person I am today if I wasn’t able to break through those shackles, which told me that it was wrong to be this person or that person – things that are seen as wholly acceptable broadly speaking in society, were seen as abhorrent within the world that I grew up in, so I had to find a philosophy that would allow me to be, allow me to exist, and amoral egoism was that philosophy.”

“I have amoral egoism in my heart and in my mind, and it will never leave,” he concludes. “I’m now focused on the next debate.” The next debate, whatever that may entail, could possibly be revealed in the forthcoming book James is currently writing, on which he says, “hopefully that’ll be out next year, worst case scenario the year after.” As well as that, we can expect more from his poetry night and event Adult Entertainment which he describes as his “baby” and “philosophical playpen”. Signing off, he says we can also expect more music. “I can’t wait to flood the streets with more beats and more sounds – I want people to dance, to feel good, to come together, to party and to enjoy life.”

‘True Romance’ is out now, get it here

Jamaal Johnson is Mixmag’s Digital Intern, follow him on Instagram